29 DAYS. 23 HOURS. 12 MINUTES
Inside, the room had little lighting and a giant, t-shaped table in the center with about a dozen chairs surrounding it. No windows in sight. I was pretty disappointed in the contrast to the rest of the fancy building. They probably didn’t bother putting us—two people and an unregistered steambot from level zero—in anything fancy. Oh well.
It was just a job proposal.
The room was currently empty, so we stood by the door and waited until the other door at the far back of the room swung open and six people poured into the room. These weren’t just any people; they were the executives of Zime Industries. The people Zimeon himself entrusted to run his company while he was busy inventing.
What was going on?
They sat in an arc at the back of the table and gestured for us to sit on the opposite side. “Please, take a seat,” a gray-haired older gentleman said. He wore a fancy suit that had far too many frills poking out of the collar and sleeves to be taken seriously. “Miss Ferning.” He looked directly at me as he addressed us.
Satisfaction curled my lips as Phyllis stiffened beside me at being ignored. IoN sat himself on the table in front of us, causing every set of eyes in the room to home in on him.
“This is the Internal OxiNexus?” the same man asked, his eyes matching the curiosity of the room.
“Y-yes—” I stammered.
“Yes,” Phyllis replied. “It was invented by my late husband, Mr. Ferning.” She placed a hand on her heart and feigned sympathy for a moment.
Watching their looks of pity made my teeth grind.
“We are sorry for your loss, Mrs. Ferning, Miss Ferning,” the man to the left with brown hair and golden freckles lining his reserved face said, “but we thank you for meeting with us here today.”
“I’m sorry,” I interrupted, “but what is this about?”
The gray-haired man flinched. “You have not told the girl?” He looked at Phyllis.
Phyllis shrugged. “It is not her decision to make. I own the garage and everything Mr. Ferning owned.”
The gray-haired man looked at me with pity. “We are here today to discuss the financial terms of the sale of the Internal OxiNexus.”
IoN moved ever so slightly in my hands—his only indication of a reaction.
What? But . . . Phyllis couldn’t do this! She . . . “I am sorry, Mr. . . . ?”
“Mr. Bunting,” he said.
“Mr. Bunting, but IoN isn’t for sale. My father left him for me after he died to help out in the garage.”
Mr. Bunting looked confused for a moment and waved his hand toward one of the gentlemen at the end of their line of important people I had no business interacting with. A blond man, no older than me, threw a file down the table. Mr. Bunting flicked through for a moment and frowned. “I am sorry, Miss Ferning, but that is not listed in his will. Meaning, just like the rest of your father’s possessions, they belong to the will’s sole beneficiary.” He gestured to Phyllis. “Your stepmother. The decision lies with her.”
I snapped my attention to Phyllis, who looked at me with her general level of disdain that I was sure was the only mood she was capable of expressing.
“The decision has been made.”
“No!” I grabbed IoN’s body with tight, rising anger. “I won’t let you sell him.”
“Cinderella!” she scolded. “You will do as you’re told.” She leaned forward and hissed, “We need the money, and who’s fault is that?”
Tears fell down my face in fierce streams that I batted away. “No,” I edged out, my usual placid expression all but a distant memory. “I won’t let you destroy everything my father worked for.” IoN was his pride and joy, his assistant when creating and fixing other bots, and his friend when Mom died.
“The decision really isn’t yours to make, Cinderella. I own it.” She rested her hand on top of IoN’s head, but I yanked him away and looked at her with as much fire as I could.
I looked at the men across the vast expanse of corporate table and pleaded with them to leave us alone. If they took their offer off the table, Phyllis couldn’t sell him.
The gray-haired man, however, just looked at me with pity and resolve. He wasn’t going to change his mind no matter how hard I begged.
Fine.
I picked IoN up off the table and cradled him in my arms as I turned to walk away.
“Stop!” one of the CEOs shouted—the first time I’d heard any of them raise their voice. “Stealing a steambot is a crime in Palatina, Miss Ferning.”
I stopped three inches from the door and something in me crumpled. “I’m not stealing anything, because IoN is mine.”
“El?” IoN spoke. “It’s okay.” He whizzed into the air and faced me. “This will be for the best, I promise.”
I shook my head. “No, it won’t.” I’d be all alone. Every member of my family finally gone: Mom, Dad, and now IoN.
“Shhh.” He wiped a stream of tears away and rested his other arm on my shoulder. “This will mean you can afford that year in engineering school you always wanted.”
The room gasped and murmurs rose like vultures circling their prey.
IoN’s mouth—the rectangular hole that acted as a mouth, anyway—lit up in a bright green, a sign he was happy.
I thought he was trying to cheer me up, but seeing him be himself only made it harder, and rather than be a fully functioning twenty-year-old adult who had fended for herself for the past five years, I broke into a heap on Zime Industries’ cold metal floor and cried for the first time since Dad had died.
The door in front of me opened and clicked shut in an almost whisper, and I looked up to find a familiar silk cloak and shining black hair falling to a slim girl’s waist.
“Enough.” She pulled her cloak’s hood down from her head. “However much they are paying you for IoN, I will double it.” She looked at Phyllis as she said this, then turned to help me off the floor. “I protect my employees.”
All six men who had previously been lording over us rushed to their feet and bowed. “Princess Jemeena.”
Princess . . . ? But how? Wha?—?
The girl—Princess Jemeena—grimaced, and I got the feeling she was trying to silently apologize for her earlier deception. She turned to face the board of Zime Industries with a face like stone. “Now, gentlemen, if you don’t mind, myself and Miss Ferning have important business to discuss.”
This entire time, Phyllis, who was still in her chair, opened her mouth to speak on several occasions, but she seemed lost for words but for stuttering, “Princ-Princess? But I...” She turned to me with wide eyes and a genuinely impressed look of surprise. “How?”
I scratched my head and shrugged. I honestly wasn’t sure either.
Princess Jemeena dusted off my dress and linked her arm through mine. “We bid you good day, sirs.” She led us through the door, around all the twisting hallways, down all the small elevators, and out of the building, all the while ensuring IoN stayed with us.
“Umm, Princess?” IoN moved ever so slightly in my arms.
She turned to me. “Please, call me Jemeena.”
“Jemeena, are you sure that was a good idea?” I asked as we got to the elevator building and passed through security without a hitch.
She giggled and led us through posh hallways, passing gilded lights and signs in languages I’d never heard. “No one will argue with the next in line to the throne.” She let go of my arm the moment we were alone. “Do not worry about a thing.” She looked away, despondent for a moment, as though her world were ending and there was nothing she could do about it.
That was when it hit me: Her world was ending.
Princess Jemeena, next in line for the throne, was going to die in twenty-nine days.
I stopped dead in my tracks underneath a flickering orange light. “Princess...you’re?—”
“I know,” she interrupted. “But, please, not here.” She looked all around us as though spies were watching. But then, she was the princess; who knew what kind of enemies she had.
Her black hair swished in the wind as she turned on her heels and power-walked down the hallway that led to a fancier version of the elevator I’d used coming up.
“Where are we going?”
She stopped before the dais steps and grimaced. “To floor fifteen.” After walking up two stairs, I realized why. She was out of breath. She’d probably used most of her energy helping me back in the meeting, then she’d charged all the way here.
Damn it, I should have made us take a hover or something. “Here.” I offered her my arm. “Let me help, Princess.”
“I do not need you to help me because of some patriotic obligation.”
I stifled a laugh, but she shot me a glare that could cut glass. “Sorry, Princess?—”
“Jemeena.”
“I’m sorry, Jemeena. It’s just...no one below floor five is overly patriotic.”
She lowered her gaze as her cheeks burned red. “I understand.”
“Do you?” I asked as we finally made it up the steps and behind the safety line.
Princess Jemeena looked to one of the steambots instead of answering me and said, “Floor fifteen, please.”
He repeated, “Descending to floor fifteen. Please remain behind the lines and hold on to the handles provided.”
We both held on, but I kept one hand on her arm, just in case. As the lift descended, she struggled to keep her balance and I whispered to myself, “Yep. Definitely needs some seating and glass doors.”
Jemeena laughed and shook her head.
“Floor fifteen. Please remain behind the safety line until the elevator has fully descended.”
Once the elevator floor had locked into place, Jemeena took my arm and guided me down some less fancy but still clean, pretty, and clearly expensive hallways until we passed security and exited the elevator building’s doors into the midday sun.
“Wow!” I gasped. The floor in front of us opened out into a large expanse of green grass that baked in the afternoon sun. “What is that?” I pointed to the...whatever it was, then looked up to notice a giant metal statue the same height as the floor in the shape of birds flying out of a stream of water.
Jemeena laughed and stepped up beside me. “It’s a garden.” She looked puzzled for a moment before asking, “Have you never seen one?”
I shook my head. “We have a few fields on floor zero that used to provide food, but as they build more and more levels, we get less and less sunlight. Most are pointless now.”
“But no gardens?”
I shook my head again.
“That’s so sad.” Her moment of care took my breath away as the watery gleam in her eyes shined on the backdrop of green, and her mouth twitched down in a frown. “Everyone should be free to explore nature.”
I couldn’t help but snort. “Yeah, well, nature is nonexistent for us, unless you count the moss.”
“Well, technically, moss is a part of nature, but, no, I don’t count it as one of its many wonders.” She sighed and grabbed my arm again. “Come on, I need to take you back so we may converse.”
She led me down vast open sidewalks, past larger gardens she called parks, and even through the open market in the floor’s center. Eventually, she stopped outside a large house without much sunlight that left me a little disappointed.
She chuckled when she saw my fallen expression. “It’s underneath the palace.” She gestured above us, and there it was, the palace that sat atop many building towers and got moved with every new floor built. “We stay in the same few towers on every floor. I think there’s even a royal embassy on floor zero.”
“Really?”
She looked at me and shrugged. “Supposedly. But we’re not allowed down that far, so I’ve no idea.”
Not allowed? They were royalty. I thought they could do whatever they wanted, go wherever they wanted to go. But looking at her less-than-happy expression as she ushered us through the golden door, I thought maybe that wasn’t the case.
Beyond the door was a foyer in an off-white marble color that seemed so out of place in our dark, dingy world—even on floor fifteen—that the brightness of it all took me by surprise.
“What is it with you rich people and the bright colors?” First Zime Industries and now this. Seren, this was getting ridiculous.
Jemeena grabbed my arm and huffed and puffed for a moment, laughing until she was bright red in the face and her lungs were coughing up a storm.
I was about to help her to a seat when a bustling lady with gray hair and a scowl shot out of a nearby door—one of over a dozen—shouting, “Princess!” She ran up to her and guided her to a seat. “Where have you been?”
“I . . . was . . . trying to?—”
“She was on floor eighteen with me, attending a meeting with Zime’s board.” I bowed slightly to the lady. “I apologize for keeping the princess longer than necessary.”
Jemeena looked at me with a smirk on her face and swallowed a laugh at my pathetic attempt to match her social graces. One stern look from the gray-haired lady had her stifling a further laugh.
“That’ll be all from you, Princess.” She turned to me. “And you”—she pointed at me—“I should have you arrested for kidnapping.”
Dread filled me.
“No, wait, Lila,” Jemeena said. “I was there by choice. I promise.” She batted her lashes at this woman and made her face look as adorable as possible.
Seren help us.
To my surprise, it worked.
Lila looked at me with disdain but said, “Fine. You might as well stay for a spot of lunch.” She looked at IoN, who was cradled in my arms, and asked, “Is there anything we can do for your steambot?”
I looked at Jemeena, who gave a firm shake of her head. “No, thank you. But a cup of toffee would be much appreciated.” I bowed my head once more and watched the lady bustle out of the foyer through a door.
“Come along,” Lila shouted. “The sitting room’s this way.”
I offered an arm to Jemeena, but she shook her head and followed without assistance.
She must be feeling better. I followed behind, feeling out of place in a royal household in my pathetic dress.
“So?” I asked Jemeena the moment Lila, who I’d learned was her lady’s maid, left us.
Jemeena coughed to clear her throat and looked at me without her usual mask in place. “So.” She put her cup of toffee on the table and looked sheepishly at the floor. “I am sorry for dragging you into this.”
I shook my head. “I should be thanking you. Without you, I would have lost IoN.” I squeezed his body in my lap, where he lay comfortably.
“About that...” She gestured to my cup of toffee, which I had yet to pick up. “I heard what your steambot said while I was standing on the other side of the door.”
I avoided her gaze.
“It’s okay,” she reassured me. “I won’t tell.”
I breathed a sigh of relief as my shoulders relaxed.
“But IoN can feel emotion, can’t he?”
I nodded again, not trusting my voice.
“That means the stories about the great engineer Preston are true. He can create life.”
“Create . . . life?”
She brushed her hair away from her tanned skin, which had returned some of its color after this morning’s adventure, and tucked it behind her ear. For a moment, I was dumbstruck by this girl’s beauty. It was as though sunlight itself poured from her every cell.
“Well,” she said, “he created IoN, didn’t he?”
“I remember him doing it.”
“Really?” she asked, suddenly more interested.
“I’m sorry.” I sipped my cup of toffee and groaned. Seren, this stuff was good. “I was just a little girl at the time. I can’t use whatever my father did to create IoN to help you, even if I wanted to.”
“I thought that might be the case.”
“Look,” I said, “I’m truly sorry. I am. But I can’t help you. I simply don’t know how.” I placed my teacup with the pretty pink flowers back on the table. “But I sympathize. I do.” I grabbed her hand. “If I were you, I’d live my best life for the next twenty-nine days. Do everything I ever wanted to do.”
“Everything you ever wanted?”
“Yeah.” I pulled her off the chair she was sitting on and spun her around, watching in joyous satisfaction as she laughed. Pulling her to a stop, I asked, “What do you have to lose?”
IoN floated behind us, awake and doing his usual whizzing through the air that he’d done every day for the past week since I’d upgraded his thrusters. “Princess Jemeena?”
“Yes?” she asked once she’d sat back down and gained her breath back.
“Preston left some paperwork behind that might be of some assistance to you.” He flew up to her and pressed an arm into her shoulder. “I do not wish to get your hopes up, Princess, but he recorded everything he did while making me.”
I shot up out of my seat and gasped. “Really?”
IoN moved up and down, nodding.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?”
“I was instructed not to.”
“By who?” I asked, my hands balling into fists.
“Preston.”
“So,” I started, just to clarify, “I’ve been wondering what about you is special so I can better protect my only family member, and all this time you’ve been ignoring my questions while sitting on the very answer I seek?” I sat back down, a calm facade, and placed my folded hands in my lap.
“Yes,” IoN answered as though he hadn’t just admitted to lying to me for the past several years.
“So you can lie?” the princess interrupted.
“Yes,” IoN repeated as he turned to answer her question. “I am capable of lying if it does not disrupt any orders from my creator.” He looked at both of our cups of toffee and did his best impression of a sigh, but, as usual, it came out crackly. That module upgrade moved up my list of priorities every day.
“Sorry,” I apologized to Jemeena with a wince. “I’ve been meaning to get his voice upgraded, but funds have been...limited.”
“I understand.” She looked at me with sincerity. “I can help, if you like?”
“No, you can’t,” I said. “And that’s the problem.” I got up and paced the room, eventually stopping at the large bay window that overlooked the city. The palace sat at the northern wall of Palatina, so all of these towers could see most of the city. “I bet you can see everything from the palace.”
“One would think,” Jemeena said as she sat beside me, “but that high up, you miss out on half the population.” She curled up next to me on the window seat. “It’s easy to forget about problems when you can’t see them.”
“How far down can you see?”
“To floor twelve, at most.” She played with the tassel of one of the cushions. “And even then, only from the lowest vantage point of the castle.”
I cringed. But what else did I expect? They hadn’t cared enough to help us lowlifes for a long time. “Is that why they keep moving the castle higher up? To avoid looking at the poverty that spreads farther up the levels every year?”
She nodded. “And I cannot even help.” She sniffed, and I got the feeling she was going to cry again. “I won’t live long enough to try.”
I grabbed her hand and rubbed circles over her palm. “That you care at all is a vast improvement.”
She chuckled. “It’s my mother’s doing. She cares so much for the people, but with my father on the throne her voice is silenced. Just like everybody else’s.” She looked up at me, and I was once again mesmerized by her vibrant green eyes. “Not everyone up here is vain and ignorant. There are those who wish to help.”
“It’s kinda hard to believe.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
“Listen,” I said, “come by the garage tomorrow. You can at least look at the paperwork Dad left behind.”
She squealed in excitement. “Really?” Her eyes lit up, and I found myself wondering if this was what she would look like without the threat of death looming on her imminent horizon.
“I don’t promise it’ll help, but you can look. If it’ll make you happy.”
“It will.”
I looked at her, confused for a moment, wondering why she continued to fight a lost cause, but she answered my question before I could voice it.
“I can’t stop trying. The throne is my birthright, and my brothers will just continue the work of my father. He’s not an evil man, but he’s not the most inclusive, either.” She looked away from me. “He’s just a tad short-sighted is all.”